Subversive Hong Kong Tours Reveal Dark Side of a Glittering City
Ms. Lau was inspired to become a tour guide in Hong Kong while backpacking around Europe;
she took a tour of Sofia, Bulgaria, that highlighted the city’s darker side.
Ms. Lau, who slept in the streets of central Hong Kong for a few weeks in 2014 as part of the Occupy movement, said the removal of four pro-democracy lawmakers from office in July had so angered
and demoralized people she knew that some were thinking of leaving the city.
During the next day’s tour, she added a dose of the latest political developments, hoping, she said,
that when Hong Kong reaches another breaking point, the tourists on her tour will see it on the news and feel a connection to the place.
It isn’t telling a lot of people’s stories." As the tour wound deeper into Kowloon, the broad peninsula
that points toward the sparkling towers of Hong Kong Island, Ms. Lau discussed the city’s housing crisis.
By CHARLOTTE GRAHAMJULY 31, 2017
HONG KONG — Among the crowds on Kweilin Street in the run-down Hong Kong neighborhood of Sham Shui Po, Alla
Lau darted between street signs, peering at the backs of them until she found what she was looking for.
Per square foot, the monthly rent was more than that of the costlier apartments in Hong Kong, one of the world’s most expensive housing markets,
and many people living in the cages make far less than the city’s monthly median income, roughly 12,000 Hong Kong dollars a month, or about $1,540.
Chinese said that There,